How does Moncler adapt a retail installation to both Latin America and Scandinavia?

January 10, 2019

Mexico City/Stockholm – Moncler has been puffing up in the past year, with new standalone stores in traditionally chilly locations such as Toronto, Moscow and Stockholm. After a successful venture in São Paulo, the Italian apparel company recently opened a second shop in Latin America, in Mexico City.

How can the same execution for the same collection be adapted for two very disparate markets?

As the brand has a global retail design strategy, many in-store experiences are replicated across locations. For example, it recently commissioned a lighting installation from Paris-based practice Bardula for the Mexico City and Stockholm shops. The result is a sculptural ribcage that holds a piece of the brand’s celebrated Genius collection inside. ‘They asked us for an installation that could be a symbiosis between art and fashion, a way to present their new collections inside an art piece,’ explained the Belgian half of the duo.

The Mexico City store in Artz Pedregal

Winters are relatively mild in Mexico City, with an average temperature of 10 degrees – but many consumers also buy down jackets for overseas travel. To enter the store in Artz Pedregal, a new shopping complex in the posh colonia of El Pedregal, visitors first walk under the sun along green horseshoe-shaped paths dotted with Ai Weiwei sculptures, past the windows of tenants like Gucci and Louis Vuitton.

In Stockholm, the store is located on the Birger Jarlsgatan shopping street in flush Östermalm, surrounded by – you guessed it – the likes of Gucci and Louis Vuitton.

The scenarios might look the same in theory, but in practice a mirrey does not shop in the same way as a latte papa. How can the same execution for the same collection be adapted for two very disparate markets? By being literally and figuratively light: Bardula’s installation features two separate mechanisms that provide some much needed glocal flexibility. The first is an elegantly technical aluminium contraption that allows store employees to replace the Genius jackets on display according to changing tastes. ‘This allows Moncler to choose the items that are most adapted to the local consumer culture,’ said the artist. The second is the use of light itself: in sun-deprived Stockholm, ‘the brand wanted a very strong lighting statement to attract people from the street in the boutique’ while in the warm environment of Artz Pedregal, ‘we used a more subtle lighting scenario to invite people to discover the installation progressively.’

This installation solution establishes itself between the extremes of hyper-localisation (think Aesop) and single-brand-aesthetic (think Tom Ford) that many global companies choose for their retail deployments. Moncler’s middle-ground approach is an interesting addition to the spectrum: it gives customers the experience of the obstinate luxury-brand vision while still acknowledging the different ways in which different markets respond to the same products.